What Could Have Been
by snitcheroonie
Summary: It's been three days since the Ark survivors returned to camp Jaha. Everyone is trying to return to normality. However, one person has not joined in with the rest. Jasper is struggling to deal with Maya's death, and there is only one person he can blame- Clarke.


**Author's Note: **This story started out as something completely different. I was personally unable to process Maya' death, so I started writing about what would have happened if she had managed to escape the Mountain and come to the Ark, but the more I wrote, the more I began to realize that her death was inevitable. Then my focus changed to Jasper and how he would feel, and this story was born.

Enjoy! And please do leave reviews!

* * *

She sees him sitting by himself, unmoving, still as a statue, near the fence at the rear of the Ark station. She has not heard him speak or seen him interact with anyone for three days. Feeling more sad than amused, she realizes that this is probably the longest she has ever seen him go without talking.

It's been three days since it happened. The Ark survivors have already mourned their losses; everyone is almost back to normal now- except Jasper. He is detached from everyone else; it is like he left a part of himself back in the Mountain. The Mountain Men didn't drain his marrow, but some part of his being still seems to have been sucked out of him.

Octavia sighs. So far Jasper has rebuffed the efforts of everyone who has tried to talk to him: Bellamy, Miller, Harper, even Monty. _Well, maybe I'll get lucky_, she thinks wryly. She walks over to where he is sitting, absentmindedly pulling up blades of grass, looking out into the woods beyond the fence.

'Hey.'

Slowly, very slowly, he looks up at her. He gives her a long, searching look, as though hoping to see someone else's face in hers. She knows he's trying to find a similarity; he is looking for her brown eyes in Octavia's blue ones, trying to visualize the shape of her nose and lips, the texture of her short, dark hair. But then he drops his gaze, turning his head towards the fence again.

'Hey.'

'You ok?'

Without looking at her, he nods.

Octavia stands there for a minute, then plonks herself down on the grass next to him. She gives him a sideways glance as he continues to stare at the fence.

_Alright_, she thinks. _Get a conversation going._

'Clarke's still missing,' she ventures. Jasper doesn't reply.

'Bellamy won't tell anyone what happened between them, although I think Kane knows,' she ploughs on relentlessly. 'He's the one who managed to stop Abby from going after her. He said she'll be back when she's ready.'

'I hope she never comes back.' His harsh tone seems to magnify the silence that stretches on for a few minutes.

'You don't mean that,' she says quietly.

'She killed all those people,' he says, his voice trembling. 'She killed… she killed Maya.'

'Jasper,' she replies, turning to him, 'she didn't have a choice.'

This time Jasper meets her gaze.

'Yes, she did,' he says, making an effort to keep the pain out of his voice. 'Just like she had a choice the day she came out of quarantine. She would have killed them all right then and there if I hadn't convinced her not to pull that lever. Well, she got her chance, didn't she? She found another lever to pull.'

Octavia says nothing. She knows he has been drowning in his own thoughts since their return from the Mountain, and she lets him keep talking, hoping that this will help to lift the pressure from his lungs.

'All she had to do was wait,' Jasper continues bitterly. 'If she'd just waited a few more minutes… I would have killed Cage… we could have freed everyone… she could have lived… she could have come back with us… we'd have found another suit, hundreds of suits… oxygen tanks… and when she got here she would have been safe in the airlocks…' as he nears the end of his speech, he seems to be talking more to himself, as though trying to convince himself of the truth in his words. He looks at Octavia, and there is a strangeness in his expression. She simply looks back at him, knowing that the look he is giving her is a look of pleading, because he so desperately wants to believe that Maya could have been saved…

'I didn't know her much,' she begins quietly, 'but I saw enough of her to realise what she was made of. A girl like that… she would have hated it. Escaping from prison only to become a prisoner again.'

'We could have found a way for her to survive, I would have given her-'

'She wouldn't have taken it. You know she wouldn't have.'

Jasper does not seem to have anything to say to this.

Octavia gets up to leave. She is barely five paces away when he speaks.

'I know.'

And suddenly he is shaking and there are tears streaming down his face; she goes back and puts an arm around him, and as he starts sobbing into her shoulder, she has a momentary vision of a boy with goggles strapped to his forehead, a boy with a spear through his chest, a boy pulling her out of a lake, a boy who would do anything to save the lives of his friends.

Ever since he had asked for a knife to kill Cage, she knew he had changed. Something inside him has shifted; he is miles away from the skinny boy who tried to be braver than he really was. Now his courage is apparent on his face, in his eyes; his bravery shines through the scars left over from the injuries he has sustained. Just like the rest of them, he has seen things he never would have imagined and done things he never thought he would do.

His journey has been one of the longest.

And he still has a long way to go.


End file.
